Is it a 'conflict of interest' for restaurant to both collect money for my bill and tell me how much my bill is? No. The rules are clear so anyone can audit their own bill if they feel they're being cheated.
If the government just said "You owe $673.25" and wouldn't tell you why or how they got to that number, then I would see a conflict.
A restaurant charge is simple - here's what you ordered, here's what each thing costs, here's the total. If you really suspect shenanigans, you get a copy of the menu to validate against.
Property tax is usually pretty simple, as is vehicle registration. Both can be described in a couple of paragraphs.
The problem right now is that even if the forms were precalculated, the IRS doesn't necessarily know about the deductions you're entitled to, and claiming those is a far more intricate process than simply filling out your PII (1040) or your wage info (W2).
Here's a relevant example. I just started going to school again at the end of last year (November). A run through with TaxAct/HR Block showed me as owing about $600 before any deductions or credits - you have to tell them about those. The fact that I started going to school gave me the "lifetime education credit", and turned a $600 payment (that I could not afford at the time, and was somewhat stressed about) into a roughly $2K payday.
Without the software, or paying an accountant, I wouldn't have known about that, and paid $600 that I didn't need to pay.
The lifetime education credit is calculated based on the 1098-T that your school had to file with the IRS.
I had to help two friends navigate TurboTax after they couldn't figure out where to enter a 1098-E (student loan interest), so my anecdotal evidence is that TurboTax easily misses certain items when hey ask "Did you go to school this year", but not "Did you have education expenses" (or something similar). Without someone who had already used the software to enter similar items, they may not have been able to get that credit.
My main complaint with TurboTax (other than the fact that I have to use software to file taxes and buy a new version every year) is that I am charged to e-file at the state level.
This is what I mean. Comparing income tax filing (with a W2 and a 1040 by mail, with nothing else, that's at least 3-4 pages of work, with no guarantee that you're paying what you ought to be) with a restaurant bill (an itemized receipt of things you bought) is fundamentally dishonest.
Every comparison made is against single charge, a single payment, based on a usually simple formula, rather than an entire freaking body of law.
Doesn't the government do this anyway? Try claiming that you owe $0 and see how that goes over. The individual taxpayer has already had the money withheld and then submits paperwork after the fact just in case any of the business entities involved failed to submit their required documentation.
Either way, I'm stuck filing the #($&ing paperwork.
Submit a signed W-4 [0] to your employer with the word "Exempt" on Line 7.
Of course, by doing so you also certify that you are actually meet the legal requirements stated on the form for $0 withholding, under penalty of perjury, so you obviously should only do it if, you know, you actually qualify for it. But that's how you do it.
AFAIK, they aren't liable for under withholding if they withhold correctly according to the W-4 signed by the employee, even if the W-4 claims things (e.g., "exempt" when the employee does not meet the qualifications) that are not accurate.
I post this not to defend Intuit, but to clarify why the tax code is complicated. It's not because Intuit goes to Congress and says "please make this thing complicated." It's because millions of people and companies each go to Congress for their pet issue.
Norquist objects to pre-filled tax forms because he wants people to think hard about their taxes at least once a year. The theory is that if paying taxes is easy and automatic, it will be harder to argue for simplification. No one will care if things are complicated if they can just push one button and forget about it.
It's part of a larger ongoing debate: if government services work so well that citizens don't have to think about them, will that have the side effect of reducing citizen engagement?
It's not so different from the tech concerns about Apple's iOS ecosystem. Will the super easy, super controlled experience of the iPhone result in fewer kids thinking about programming?
I don't. The IRS is going to calculate how much people owe in any case. The question is whether they provide all the information they've collected first, and calculate the results based on that, and provide it to the taxpayer who can either accept it or note any changes/additional information and return it, or they make the taxpayer do it first from scratch (or pay someone else to do it, or pay for a tool to do it), and then the IRS goes and does it in anyway for every taxpayer taking into account the information they have from the taxpayer and what they have received separately.
In either case, the IRS is absolutely going to calculate how much people owe. That's not even the choice that is at issue. So the objection to one side of that choice that the IRS calculating how much people owe is a "conflict of interest" is a non-sequitur; it simply has no bearing on the choice.
I think there's some logic in this objection, but then again, I don't see these same complaints levied against the other "post-billed" taxes people deal with, like property, vehicle, and so forth.
Really, there's no likeable side in this. The tax prep software people (never buy Intuit!) have a vested interest in keeping the tax code complicated, and decent portions of the government has a vested interest in same.
The solution to both problems is a massive simplification of the income tax code - too many people opposed to it for that to ever happen, though.